


Familiarity

by mithborien



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-06
Updated: 2006-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-19 16:52:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mithborien/pseuds/mithborien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s always easy to spot the newly bitten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Familiarity

It’s always easy to spot the newly bitten.

They’re the ones with fear in their eyes and twitching hands. The ones who haven’t learnt to hide the signs of what they’ll become. They’re the ones who look more like a wolf, a damaged and scared wolf but a predator all the same. One who believes they only have two choices: to run or fight.

She’s a Muggle, which makes it even worse. Witches and wizards know what it means when you get bitten. They know there is no cure and the best thing for them to do is to run while they still have the chance. Muggles don’t know about magic. They think it was just a large dog and the wound got infected. They go to the doctors, get stitched up and swallow down prescribed medicine that won’t work. Then the day before the full moon when they realise that something is not right, that’s when they run. Most of the time it’s too late, they don’t get far enough away before it’s too late and Aurors charge them with murder when they turn screaming back into their human form.

The full moon’s tomorrow night and she must have been smart enough to get away from her loved ones before it’s too late. Maybe she read a few books growing up, a few fairytales that are now turning into fact but there’s a knowledge in her eyes that shows she’s realised what has happened. She knows it’s bad, she can feel it in her body, her bones twisting ever so slightly, tendons tightening.

She’s sitting in a corner of the bar, cradling a drink all by herself like some heartbroken wife whose husband left her and she’s on the road to get her life back together again. Her eyes are shadowed, makeup smudged and there’s an overnight bag tucked underneath the table, clutched between her feet. There’s no wedding ring on her finger but she might have taken it off or maybe she just had a boyfriend who dumped her in disgust.

She doesn’t look up when a shadow crosses her table, just twirls her glass with one finger, watching the liquid swirl around the bottom.

“Look,” she says tiredly, “if you’re here to pick up, don’t bother. You don’t want me and you have no chance if you did. And if you’re here for another reason then I really don’t give a fuck at the moment.”

“What if I said I was here to help?” Remus asks.

She laughs. “No one can help me.”

“I know what’s wrong.” There’s something in his voice that gets her to look up, some sort of familiarity, kindred spirits. She can hear the same desperation buried deep in his words that’s barely restrained from breaking free in hers.

She stares at him for a moment then stands, dropping a few coins on the table and takes his hand.

~

“I didn’t think the rooms here were that bad,” she says with disgust when he unlocks the door to his motel room and steps aside graciously to let her inside.

“Were you thinking of getting one?” he asks and she shrugs.

“Suppose it didn’t really matter where I went.” She drops her bag at the foot of the bed and slowly walks around the room. It’s only one room plus a small bathroom but that’s more a cupboard than a room. There’s a small kitchenette in one corner but most of the electrical sockets don’t work, including the one for the small fridge, so really, putting food in there is a gamble and the odds aren’t with you. There’s also a table and two chairs, a fan that makes frightening noises bolted to the roof and a black and white television that doesn’t work. She sees his meagre possessions that are strewn around the room.

“Don’t have much stuff,” she notes.

“I get by,” he says quietly, leaning against the door, watching her.

“Who are you?” she says suddenly, spinning on her feet to face him.

“My name is Remus Lupin,” he replies with a small smile.

He sees her turn the words over in her head. “Remus. Lupin,” she whispers to herself and looks at him, the question on her lips.

“An ironic coincidence,” he says and pushes himself off the door. “Would you like a drink?”

“I think I’ve had enough drinks,” she says and sits down on the edge of the bed, the springs creaking and groaning. “You said you could help me,” she repeated his words.

“I did,” Remus affirms and takes out a half warm beer for himself from the fridge.

“You said you knew what was wrong with me.”

“I do. It’s what’s wrong with me.” He pops the lid on the bottle and takes a long swallow.

“Is there… is there anyway to fix, to cure it?” she asks, all the fear and desperation back in her voice.

“No.”

~

She doesn’t say much, as he moves back and forth across the room, tidying up in places and putting together a half decent meal from what little food he has. She doesn’t thank him when he hands her something to eat. She just takes the food and continues to stare out the window where the moon hangs low in the sky.

It’s close to full, close enough that you couldn’t really tell the difference.

“How did it,” she starts to ask. “How did it happen to you?”

Remus sighs, looks at her again but she is still staring out the window, transfixed. She’s quite pretty, he thinks. Or she would be if she smiled or brushed her hair. He can just imagine what she would have looked like before she was bitten, when the worst she had to worry about was the next bill to pay. She wouldn’t have that harsh glare to her face or hands that belonged on an older woman.

“I was six. Playing outside at night and I got bitten,” he says simply.

She takes a deep breath as her shoulders shake. “You were six?”

He shrugs. “I’m fairly sure.”

She sets aside the rest of her meal. “You were so young. How old are you now?”

“Twenty six.”

“Twenty years?” she asks with a gasp. You’ve had this for twenty years?”

He shrugs again, this time a little stiffly. “Didn’t have much of a choice.”

“How do you survive?”

Remus still remembers long moonlit runs with animals at his side and wind in his fur. It was enough then to make him forget what he really was and think he still had a chance at a normal life. It’s almost enough now.

“Don’t have a choice. How did it happen for you?” he asks before she can question him further.

She’s been sitting on the floor of the room, just next to the bathroom door. Her knees are drawn up to her chest and her spine is arching into the flaking plaster wall. The bottoms of her jeans are caked with dirt but they look expensive, as do her shoes, real leather. Her shirt is hanging loose on her shoulders like she had lost weight recently.

“It was over three weeks ago,” she says dully. “I heard a noise so I went outside to check. My dog had been getting into fights lately and I didn’t have the money to take him to a vet if he got hurt.” She sniffed, wiped her hand across her face. “They put him down a week after it happened, said he bit me and was too dangerous. He never harmed anyone in his life.”

She looks up. Remus thought she had been crying but her cheeks were dry. “My father used to read me stories when I was younger. You know, fairytales and folk stories. When the drugs the doctors gave me didn’t work, when the wound kept getting worse, I… I just knew something was wrong and I ran.”

“Did you leave anyone behind?” he asks.

She laughs. “Everyone.” She takes a deep breath. “My friends have no idea where I am, my parents died three years ago and I didn’t tell my boss I left. Although, the job I didn’t like so much.”

“That’s good.”

“Good? It’s not so much fun having a job you don’t like.”

“I meant its good you didn’t have many people you left behind,” Remus clarifies. “No husband or children or anything?”

“No,” she whispers. “Nothing like that.”

“Like I said,” he repeats. “Good.”

“Did you leave anyone behind?” she asks, hands at her sides now, legs sprawled across the floor, the tension draining out of her as her secrets were revealed.

He pauses then shakes his head. He hasn’t been back to their graves in years. “No, they all left me.”

She looks down at her hands. “Is that… is that why you’re helping me?”

“No,” he says quietly. “I’m helping you because you need it. It’s… it’s easier if you have someone there with you.”

He let’s her take the bed, while he piles some blankets on the floor. She doesn’t go to sleep for a long while, he can tell by the sound of her breathing, too light and irregular, occasionally interspersed with half heard sobs. It occurs to him, lying there listening to her breathing that he still doesn’t know her name.

~

She sleeps late. He gets up early.

The full moon will rise tonight and no matter how many times he’s gone through it, he still can’t relax the day before. He always has to do something to keep his mind off things. He glances toward the bed where she’s twitching in her sleep and wonders if what he said the night before was true. That he was helping her because she needed it. Or maybe it was simply to keep his mind off his own torments.

The smell of crushed herbs is what awakens her, jerking awake before realising where she was and relaxing.

“Sleep well?” Remus asks.

She stretches under the sheets and shivers. “No. It felt like my bones were trying to twist out of my skin.”

“You get used to it.”

She sniffs and wrinkles her nose. “What are those things?”

Remus has a whole set of potions making equipment laid out before him, including a portable cauldron and a selection of oddly coloured plant clippings. “I’m making some potions for us,” he says simply.

“Potions?” she asks with a half laugh.

“Muggle medicine doesn’t help.”

“Muggle?”

“Normal medicine.”

She shakes her head with a smile. “What are you talking about?”

As far as he knew the Statute of Secrecy was still in place but it had been a long time since he followed any laws, wizarding or otherwise. He mirrors her smile. “I’ll tell you later. I’m just making something that will help us later on.”

She gives him an odd look but doesn’t say anything else as she grabs her overnight bag and walks into the bathroom. It’s an hour later when she finally emerges again and Remus pretends not to have heard the muffled sobs. Her face is clean of the couple of day’s worth of makeup and her hair is damp. She still looks like she hasn’t had a decent nights sleep for a month, which she probably hasn’t, but at least she doesn’t look like she’s going to collapse anymore.

She walks up to the table and sits down opposite Remus. He’s finished mixing up the limited number of potions that he knows that might help and is packing up the kit when she speaks.

“You know things that normal people don’t know,” she says bluntly and waves a hand at the various foreign paraphernalia lying on the table, her hand lingering over the still bubbling cauldron. “This isn’t some sort of natural medicine crap is it? It’s something different?”

“Yes,” he says simply.

“There’s so much I don’t know, isn’t there?”

He can feel the length of his wand pressing against his skin where it’s tucked up into his sleeve. There are numerous magical objects tucked away in his own bags that he could show her but he’s never had to indoctrinate a Muggle into the magical world before and he doesn’t know where to start so he says nothing.

She stares at him for a moment then sighs and gets to her feet. “I never had a chance,” she says vaguely as she flops down on the bed.

He stops the cauldron bubbling and starts to pour the contents out into little glass bottles. “Not many people ever do. I’m sorry.”

They stay there in silence as he finishes packing up the potions kit. He may have some idea of how to physically help her when the moon rose but he has no idea what to say to her in the meantime.

“When it happens…” she starts herself, breaking the silence. “It’s going to hurt, isn’t it?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes,” she says without hesitation.

“It’s worse than you can possibly imagine.” He places the little potion bottles in the broken fridge and starts to tidy up the rest of the kitchenette to avoid having to turn around and look at her.

“You’ll… you’ll be there with me, won’t you?” she asks, her voice desperate and scared.

“Yes.”

“Will we hurt each other?”

He smiles to himself at her concern. “I’ll make sure we don’t,” he says reassuringly. “Hurt each other or anyone else.”

“But we’ll each hurt ourselves, won’t we?”

The smile drops from his face but she never saw it appear to begin with.

~

She doesn’t ask questions when he tells her to stand close and hold on tight when he Apparates them away. The warehouse hadn’t been used for a long time before Remus stumbled across it and with a multitude of spells, it had become a safe haven on full moons.

He stashes his bag of potions and his wand underneath a loose floor board. There’s a trick to levering the board out that a wolf’s paw can’t understand. He also casts a few more spells on the windows and doors, muttering under his breath before tucking his wand in the cavity as well. When he stands, she’s looking at him.

“Magic is real, isn’t it?” She’s shivering slightly in the night air and her eyes are wide from the Apparation.

“Magic has always been real,” he says with a smile. “People just don’t see it.”

She just continues to stare at him, taking deep breaths. “I… I don’t…”

He places both hands on her shoulders, he can feel them shaking. “Just don’t think about it. There’s nothing you can do about it now. Remember, you’re not alone.”

She nods blankly and takes another deep breath. He feels her shoulders rise and fall underneath his hands.

“So,” she says quietly. “How do we do this?”

Maybe it’s the upcoming transformation that’s giving him a bit of extra confidence, having been through it so often or maybe the adrenaline is already starting to course through his veins in preparation. Either way, he manages to keep his voice steady when he says, “You need to disrobe… take your clothes off.”

She blinks at him. Her mouth starts to move to form what he assumes is some sort of insulting comeback as the barest hint of her personality shows. Her personality before the bite and the one he saw in her when she told him to fuck off the previous night.

“You’ll rip them to shreds otherwise,” he says and she doesn’t stop him when he slides her jacket off her shoulders.

He turns around to leave her to undress, disrobing himself and stretching out his limbs. He gathers up his clothes and pushes them into the gap under the floor boards. When he stands, she’s holding her clothes in a bundle before her, shadows hiding the rest of her body.

“You know,” she says, attempting a laugh. “I never go this far on a first date.”

He smiles. “Neither do I.”

She doesn’t resist when he pulls her clothes out her hands but she grabs his hand when he finishes packing her clothes in with his, sliding the floorboard back into place and pressing it shut.

“Thankyou,” she says, making sure to look into his eyes.

“For what?” he asks blankly.

“For helping me even when you knew it wouldn’t do any good.”

He squeezes her hand. “This shouldn’t have happened to you.”

She smiles sadly. “This shouldn’t have happened to anyone.”

Her face then goes tight with pain and he sees her muscles visibly twitch and contract underneath her skin. Her eyes are wide and utterly terrifying and he pulls her close when she cries out in pain. He knows what it feels like to have something unknown transforming your body but this is all new for her and he feels her shaking even harder in his arms.

“Don’t fight it,” he whispers into her hair, their skin burning up where they touched. “There’s nothing you can do now but accept it.”

She shudders in his arms and he feels her fingernails digging into his back, fingernails beginning to tear across his skin. He feels her lungs expand against his chest, the scream building in her throat and he hears it tear forth from his own.

~

The aftermath is not as bad as he expected. With another werewolf to bite and claw, the damage she dealt to herself was minimal, relatively speaking. Remus himself was long accustomed to a multitude of wounds, so their injuries healed fairly quickly with the aid of the potions.

It’s the mental consequences that he doesn’t know how to deal with. He was young enough when bitten that he kinda just grew up with it. He doesn’t know how it would feel to be bitten in the prime of your life, have your entire world destroyed.

Although, he suspects he may have some idea.

She spends one night in his room sleeping it off, Remus collapsed on the bed next to her, before renting a room of her own. He doesn’t blame her and he’s slightly relieved. Accepting what just happened takes time and it’s something only she can accomplish on her own.

She drops by a couple of days later.

“Feeling okay?” he asks when he opens the door to his room and sees her leaning against the door.

She smiles when she sees him, stretching out one shoulder after the other. “All right as can be expected I guess. The pain passes quickly.”

He nods. “You get used to it.”

“You going somewhere?” she asks, nodding her head to the few packed bags that were waiting just beyond the door frame.

“Not a good idea to stay in one place.”

“Weren’t you going to say goodbye?” she asks and he can tell she’s trying to deliberately keep her voice calm.

“Look-” he starts but she grabs his arm. Her fingers are tighter and digging into his flesh like they were on the night they transformed. He can see the fear and distress in her eyes and he knows she isn’t okay as she says she is. That she is nowhere near accepting what she has become.

“You said it’s easier with someone with you.” The words tumble out desperately and Remus freezes as he realises what she’s about to say.

“Whatever you’re proposing,” he says, “it’s not a good idea.”

Her face seems to twitch. “Then tell me what the hell I am supposed to do?”

He twists his arms and pulls it from her now slack grip. He bends down and scrounges around in one of his bags for a moment before pulling out a piece of parchment and a ballpoint pen.

“Follow these instructions,” he says, scribbling against the door. “They’ll take you to people who help newly bitten werewolves.”

She flinches at the word. “Werewolves? That’s what we are now? Not human?”

“Werewolves. Get used to it.”

“Can I even trust these people?”

He thrusts the paper into her hands. “They aren’t the authorities, of any sort. They’ll help. I can’t anymore.”

“So what are you going to do now?” she asks angrily but she tucks the slip of paper into her pocket anyway.

He shrugs. “Do what I’ve always done. Go someplace else.”

“Alone?”

“Alone is good.”

“You said it’s easier if someone is there with you,” she repeated.

“Sometimes. Sometimes nothing can help.” He turns away from her and slings his bags over his shoulders.

“You know,” she says, watching him. “I think the reason you helped me is not because I needed it but because you needed it. It’s you who needs someone with them.”

He laughs harshly. “Think what you like. It won’t change anything.” He sighs. “I did what I could to help you but that’s all I can do. I have more problems than you think and you don’t want to walk this life with me.”

He turned away but a jingling sound made him turn back.

“Who said anything about walking?” she said, the metal of the keys swinging around her finger glinting in the sun. “I have a car.”

Remus paused then let his bags fall to the ground. He looked at her, still seeing the fear and anxiety and hopelessness in her eyes but he had once seen those same things in his eyes. Sometimes people got better.

He walked forward and held out his name.

“Hi,” he said slowly. “My name is Remus Lupin.”

She took his hand with the hand that held the car keys and he felt the cold metal against his palm.

“Nice to meet you,” she said with a wide smile. “My name is Rachael Harris. It may not have any special meanings but I do believe we have some things in common.”

Remus grinned.


End file.
